


That Mourns in Lonely Exile

by madame_faust



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Battle of Azanulbizar, Depression, Durin Family, Durin Family Angst, Dwarf Culture & Customs, Dwarves In Exile, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Heavy Angst, Mental Anguish, Mental Health Issues, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-25
Updated: 2013-10-25
Packaged: 2017-12-30 11:32:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1018106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madame_faust/pseuds/madame_faust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Almost a year to the day after the slaughter at Azanulbizar, Thorin Oakenshield, King-in-Exile finally begins to heal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Mourns in Lonely Exile

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheQueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheQueen/gifts).



> **Disclaimer:** I own nothing, I am making no profit from this work. 
> 
> **Warnings:** This story contains descriptions of **self-harm** , **PTSD** , **panic attacks** , **major depressive episodes** , **survivor's guilt** and **suicidal thoughts**. It's all in the tags and there are moments of levity, but I want to make it clear - things get really awful before they get better.
> 
> Originally this was going to be part of my story _The Noonday Demon_ , but it expanded beyond that. The last section coincides with my one-shot _Bent, Not Broken_ which gives Dís's point of view. Title comes from the holiday classic, "Oh Come, Oh Come Emmanuel." This fic was inspired by a post by **thequeen117** , and I hope it lives up to her expectations. (Also, the formatting isn't the way I wanted it, but it looks right in the edit function and I don't know how to fix it, so apologies for that.)

There were songs written of warriors, of heroes, following their conquests. They were sung in low, respectful voices around hot campfires on cold nights or slurred in mead halls among hundreds of flaming torches by a thousand raised and merry voices.

No song could be writ of Thorin, son of Thráin following his people’s hollow victory. The only place tales of _his_ conduct on the battlefield could be re-told was a funeral, head tilted back, throat bared to a cold, indifferent sky. And there was no funeral, not one for thousands, so there could be no song.

What struck one, in those dark hours when the sun hid its face for shame - could it ever shine again upon the faces of the survivors, or the ashes of the dead? - was how quiet it all was. No clang of sword and shield, no crack of splintering bone or wet slice of tearing flesh. All the blood, black and red, had gone to the earth.

No grass would grow upon the killing fields in the years that followed, upon that scorched land that surrounded the mouth of Khazad-dum. It was a fitting marker, given that there would be no monument. Even if all the axes and shields of the slain were melted down and recast, there would not be steel enough to mould their markers.

What could be written to commend their valor? In what tongue could they capture their bravery, their strength, their sacrifice? Khuzdul, perhaps, but to chisel it in rock and metal for the eyes of the world to look upon would be unthinkable to any dwarf, blasphemous.

What was their victory? A hollowed out piece of stone they could not enter for fear of death, even now, more death, when they thought the Halls of their Maker must be full to bursting. If they stopped and listened in this awful quiet, would they hear them, the screams of pain, the howls of grief, the wrenching sobs echo from the heavens?

Thorin thought he could. He heard them all the time, in the silence. If they would build a monument to the glorious slain, let it stretch to the clouds, nay, to the very stars themselves. Let Mahal see it with His own eyes and let Him _grieve_ , let Him cradle His head in His rough hands and _weep_ for His children. Re-Made, brought to wait, wait, wait for those too lucky and too misfortunate to go to His side.

How did they come? Thorin wondered. Piecemeal, holding their severed limbs in aching arms, their _heads_ in their hands, still dripping gore, blind, deaf, dumb, but for for their screams? What did He do, their Maker? Tenderly stuff their dripping viscera back in their bodies, rain down holy fire over their flesh to Make them anew?

Or were they ash, sifting through His great, trembling hands. _My children, my children,_ He might moan. _I should have destroyed you before you could destroy yourselves._

With that thought burning in his mind, Thorin got to his feet, trembling, tripping, tangled in his bedclothes and fought his way out of the tent. Using the last of his strength, he stumbled to the edge of the encampment - not so far, with so many gone - and heaved and heaved until he was doubled over with cramps and thought he might turn himself inside out for pain and force, but nothing came up. How long had it been since he’d last eaten? Thorin could not remember the last time he tasted anything but the salt of his own tears.

The dirt was cold and wet, seeping into the fabric bunched at Thorin’s knees. He knelt upon the ground for a long while once the fit had passed and his stomach settled. As exposed and uncomfortable as he was in the midnight air, he did not want to return to his tent - _his_ , his alone.

For the past two years the den of furs and blankets, covered over with skins had been too cramped for himself and his younger siblings. Many was the morning he woke with one of Dís’s elbows wedged in his ribs or Frerin’s hair in his mouth, sore and overheated, wishing he had a room of his own.

Rare was the night sleep found him and it was a cold and solitary slumber he had, with Dís gone to their mother’s tent in the nights following the battle and Frerin…

Thorin was sobbing again, choking the sound back, shuddering so hard he thought his soul might fly loose from his body and ascend to the Halls to drop on his knees and beg forgiveness from his brother - so _young_ , he was _so young,_ he was...he was…

 _“Too young, it’s out of the question.”_ Thráin’s battle armor was battered and worn, its once bright-red sheen dulled to the color of old blood. Nevertheless, Thorin thought his father never looked more dignified. _“If you aren’t old enough to sign a contract, you’re not old enough to go to war.”_

 _“But Adad -”_ Thorin elbowed his brother in the side, hard. He sounded like he was whinging and if he wanted his father and grandfather to believe he was grown enough to spill his own blood for honor, petulance would have to be done away with.

 _“But nothing,”_ Thráin snapped. _“I was eighty-eight when I first went to war, that’s nearly twenty years older than you and look what that got me.”_

The gesture at the pitted crater that stood in place of his left eye was one that left both Thorin and Frerin momentarily stunned. Not once in their lives had their father’s impressive battle wound been referenced as a sign of inexperience, but always lauded as a symbol of sacrifice, his stubborn and commendable will to survive.

 _“But you got out, you survived.”_ Thorin was the first to recover his wits and pressed on. _“Náin was by and he wasn’t any older than you were, I’ll stay by Frerin’s side, I’ve seen war, I can - ”_

 _“You?”_ Something flickered over Thráin’s face, something dark and sour. At the time, Thorin thought was scorn and blanched, even as he made his face blank and met his father’s eyes. Thinking back, it suddenly occurred to him that the expression was a fearful one. _“You’ll have enough trouble keeping yourself alive, never mind your brother. Again, no.”_

Thorin had pride enough to bristle at that. _“I’ve fought with honor these six years,”_ he protested, the words almost a snarl. _“I’ve still got all my limbs, haven’t I? My hands, my head,_ both _eyes.”_

The fear in his father’s face was gone, overtaken by anger. _“And you call that skill?”_ Thráin asked. __“Honor? It’s a measure of ability, but just a measure. Six years, it’s nothing. You tally the wars of my life, six times six years, and then add to that the number of those who fell around me. Some worse for skill, possessed of little honor, but some finer warriors than I could hope to be. You listen to me and you listen well: I’ve seen you fight, you are not_ good _enough to - ”__

 _ _“Grandfather!”_ _ Frerin spoke up when their king entered the tent, looking pale and exhausted though the battle was not yet begun. __“How old were you on the eve of your first battle?”__

 _ _“Seventy-three,”_ _ he replied promptly, despite his air of distracted melancholy. A Dwarf might forget many things, his wedding anniversary, his own Name Day, a king might even mistake the year of his ascension, but a dwarf never forgot how old they were when they packed up their gear, sharpened their swords and set off on their first campaign.

 _ _“See?”_ _ Frerin sawed the air violently in frustration. __“Grandfather wasn’t of age either!”__

 _ _“That’s different,”_ _ Thráin replied shortly. __“Your grandfather was a prince - “__

 _ _“What am I, then?”_ _ Frerin cried, all pretence of stoicism forgotten, if it had ever been there to begin with. __“The help? The Fool? Just good for jests and japes, then? If Grandfather - ”__

Thráin crossed the few feet that separated him from his youngest son and took him by the arm, shaking him roughly to quiet him, __“It was a different time then, we were a different people.”_ _

Try as he might to shy away from the memory, Thorin recalled the words he spoke, as sharp as if the scene was being played upon a stage before him while he looked on, an audience member gagged and bound, unable to stop the terrible action from unfolding.

 _ _“They’ll say we’re cowards,”_ _ Thorin remembered saying with awful clarity. __“They will. They do. We called them to arms from over hills, under mountains, over seas, and yet the line of Durin will not call upon their own sons to pick up an axe.”__

His father dropped his brother’s arm abruptly and ran his hand over his face, laughing mirthlessly.

 _ _“Let them talk,”_ _ he muttered darkly. __“Let them wring their hands and twist their beards and roll their eyes, I haven’t the patience for their moans. Our sons. As if they’ve any idea, any...I won’t have it. I won’t. They can turn their backs on us and go back to their halls and we’ll see who the cowards are - ”__

__“He’s right.”__

At the time it seemed a blessing, that his grandfather took his side, defended himself, his brother, but afterward Thorin thought - curse him, curse him for a traitor - that it was Thrór’s last and worst betrayal. When his grandfather spoke for him, spoke for them, spoke for Frerin, what could Thráin do, but obey?

In the end, no one called them cowards. ‘Oakenshield,’ was Thorin. A burned dwarf was Frerin. Mad was old King Thrór and where was King Thráin?

It was the third day since the battle. The wounds in young Dáin’s leg were festering, there was talk the limb would have to go. The healer’s tents still held the wounded who could not walk and the camp was littered with the beds of those well enough to crawl away from the reek of blood and infection.

Thorin looked down at his arms, his wounds were scabbing over, well on their way to healing. His legs were fine, his arms were strong, his flesh would heal. He would bear few scars upon his body from this long and awful war.

Abruptly, he thought of Dwalin, head still swathed in bandages, who had squeezed his hand and croaked his name when Thorin looked in on him. Dwalin joked that he was sure it looked worse than it was. Óin said it was a miracle that he wouldn’t lose the eye. Balin hadn’t spoken a word, just nodded at Thorin from his post outside the tent and methodically cleaned his father’s axe to gleaming. His mother’s loupe was on a chain around his neck, it glinted dully in the afternoon sunlight. All he had left of his parents.

Thráin’s bluster about age and skill, it meant nothing in the end, nothing. Fundin, their best warrior, a hero of legend in the latter days, into his second century, was burned beside a boy of seventy years, so small, so thin once his borrowed armor was peeled off his broken body.

Oh, it wasn’t fair. Dwalin was stronger than him, he always had been, a better fighter too, tough as granite and he lay on a pallet in a tent while Thorin ran to the edge of the wood, both eyes open, new skin overlaying the old, covering the wounds as if they had never happened.

Thorin loathed his hands and his arms with a sickening burning. Let Dáin keep his legs, instead let Thorin’s fingers blacken and wither, let the flesh rot from his bones and fall all to dust. What good were they, those arms that could slay an orc, but could not save his brother? What was there left of goodness in him?

Again, Thorin was watching his life from the outside, gagged and bound. He did not cry out when his dirty fingernails dug into the hard red-black lines that crossed his arms. His jaw clenched at the pain, but his lips twitched in satisfaction as he saw the wells of blood rise up again, stinging in the cold air. What right had he to heal while so many suffered? None. None at all. So let him bleed.

When his sister caught his sleeve over a breakfast that Thorin did not touch and asked, “Is that blood?” he only had to shift away from her, eyes on the camp, dirty and miserable, muttering, “It’s old,” and she did not ask again.

* * *

It was a month gone by since the battle when Freya cut her beard short and Thorin knew then as he had not before that he would never see his father again.

It was two days after that, when one of the healers - not Óin, a girl, young, his own age, maybe and he struggled to recall her name - bowed low as he prepared to take his leave and called him, “My King.”

Thorin did not know what he’d said in reply. If he’d replied before he’d stumbled away from her, away from everyone, back to his own tent.

 _ _I can’t feel my hands,_ _ was his only clear thought when he tripped over his boots and crashed into his blankets. Thorin was all over cold, except for the burning heat that seemed to radiate from his brow, down his spine, making him sweat despite the chills racking him. Was he going to weep again? Thorin pressed his knuckles against his mouth to stifle any forthcoming sobs, but his hands were numb, he bit into them with his teeth, he tasted that familiar sharp, coppery tang on his tongue, but he could not feel anything.

Beneath his curled arm, his heart beat faster and faster, but he was still as stone, save for the occasional shiver that ran through him. Sweat beaded down his face and ran into his eyes and he ground his teeth harder into his knuckles. He couldn’t breathe. Air came in gasps and grunts and he wondered if this was death at last and shouldn’t he be afraid, shouldn’t there be more pain? There was only the cold and the fire and the endless, endless ache and his heart was going to burst, he wished it would, then the tent walls would stop spinning and he could sleep at last, he hadn’t slept in…in…

“Thorin!” His mother was kneeling beside him, pulling him into her lap despite the fact that he was taller than her, broader than her, had been for years, but she held him in her arms. Cradled him, really. Like a child. Her face was so pale. “Thorin!”

That was it. That was all he was, Thorin. And that wasn’t even his Name.

“Breathe, darling, there’s a lad. Take a deep breath, please, let it out.”

He tried. He did try, his mother said please, she never said please, but he couldn’t. “I can’t…” he managed and she tugged him closer, kissing his hot brow. The bristles of her beard scraped his skin and she took his hands away from his mouth. “Can’t breathe.”

“If you can talk, you can breathe,” she said, rubbing his back, pulling his hair away from his face. “Come now, in and out.”

He choked before he breathed. Gagged and coughed with such force that he felt wet warmth trickle down his leg and he tried to pull away from his mother, to hide his face for shame, but she refused to let him go. “No, no,” she shook her head, biting her lip, kissing him again. “Clothes can be laundered. _Breathe,_ please, for me, _please,_ my love.”

She kept saying please, she was making it worse, for she was not acting like his mother. Freya of the line of Durin did not ask, she commanded, she did not cajole, she ordered and if she would only act like herself again, he might begin to believe that the world as he knew it was not destroyed for the second time in his short life.

Short. It was true, he had not lived many years, but he had lived longer than so many, crushed, starved, burned to nothing. Longer than his brother.

In the end he did not die, his heart did not burst, his mother stopped pleading. The fit went as it had come on, suddenly and he took air in his lungs and breathed it out. When he closed his eyes, exhausted, his mother murmured prayers against his hair as she kissed him again and again. Later, she left him, curled under blankets and furs and he did not rise again through the rising and setting of two suns.

Dís brought him meals that went untouched, but by the third day she came empty-handed and curled up next to him, sneaking beneath the blankets that he wrapped tight around himself, like armor. Thorin hadn’t bathed in days, he probably smelled rank, but she buried her face in his shirt and hugged him tight around the middle as she had when she was tiny enough to sit curled in his lap, sheltered completely by his arms.

All elbows and knees she was now, face too sharp and thin as she leaned her forehead against his chest and sighed, a long mournful sound, too tragic for one so young.

Poor child, Thorin thought, his mind distant, cloudy. Poor child.

“Everyone’s so worried,” she said to his chest, mouth over his heart. “About you.”

 _Why?_ Thorin wondered. He was perfectly hale, after all. No matter how stubbornly he tore at his flesh, it scabbed over again and again until all the was left of his paltry hurts were little scars, almost invisible. As though he’d hadn’t gone into battle at all.

If Thorin had a better imagination, that might have given him cause to rise and carry on. If he could pretend, for a few hours a day, that his grandfather wasn’t dead, just in his own tent, that his brother wasn’t gone, just shirking from his daily tasks, his father was still in the camp, he’d only just missed him going, that would be something.

But Thorin could not pretend. When he did sleep he was haunted by visions of his grandfather’s face, dripping blood, mutilated by crude Orcish knives. He woke, scrubbing violently at his hands and chest, still feeling Frerin’s hot blood running down his arms and over his shirt, like rivers. And his mother’s shorn beard was a daily reminder that his father was never ever coming back.

 _ _My King._ _ The words came back to him and he shuddered violently, which only made Dís clutch him all the tighter.

Why would anyone be worried about him? It would be a more profitable use of their time to worry about Dáin, who still lingered on in their camp, unable to be moved until the cautery burns on his ruined leg healed over. Worry about Heidrek, his schoolmate and shieldbrother whose breaths got shallower by the day and had not opened his eyes since a blow from a club shut them on the battlefield. Worry about that kindly Broadbeam toymaker who talked about how he had two young cousins to provide for. The axe still embedded in his head was a gruesome war trophy and unlike Heidrek, he had no kinfolk to sit vigil by his bedside, to care for him and pray over him.

Do not waste worries on Thorin. There was nothing ailing him.

A warm weight settling behind him made Thorin open his eyes. Had they been shut? Surely he had not been sleeping. Dís was still lying half on top of him, sleeping, but her fists were curled tight in his shirt and her knuckles whitened when she felt her brother shift away from her. Thorin didn’t even tense when he felt arms around his chest, a face pressing into the back of his neck. What a poor warrior he was, to drop his guard so. Anyone might have slit his throat. Not good enough.

Yet the one who held him wouldn’t dream of doing him a harm. Not now. Not even now.

“Come back,” Dwalin muttered into the space between his shoulderblades. “Come back, Thorin, I’m begging you. I won’t lose you too.”

 _ _I’m not lost,_ _ Thorin thought. __I’m right here. It’s not me you have to worry about.__

“I’m fine,” he whispered. Of course he whispered, of course the words were more breath than speech; his sister was sleeping, he wasn’t to wake his sister when she was sleeping.

Dwalin bit back a cry; his voice was so deep it reverberated through Thorin’s chest, shaking his leaden heart to beating again. “No you’re not, you’re not,” he moaned. “We’re all of us suffering, but you’re different, you’ve always been different. What can I do to bring you back this time? Let me help.”

“I don’t need help,” Thorin closed his eyes again, weary, though he hadn’t risen from his pallet in days and days. “I’m not...I wasn’t injured.”

“That’s a lie,” Dwalin shook his head, his arms around Thorin tightened. “That’s the worst lie you’ve ever told.”

Neither of them said anything else. Maybe they slept, maybe they held each other through the night. Thorin must have dozed at some point, for he opened his eyes once to darkness, but for the glow of a full moon coming in through the tent flap. It illuminated every strand of grey in Balin’s hair, such a contrast to his still young face, lined not with age, but with grief.

He’d come to do a kindness, it seemed. Thorin kept his eyes half-closed as Balin spread a blanket, patched and frayed, but warm, over the three of them. For several long minutes he lingered, staring down at the three of them tangled together, then clamped a hand over his mouth to silence a sob before he padded away, feet bare, into the night.

The only reason Thorin hauled himself out of bed the next day to wash and dress and eat was because he couldn’t tolerate the idea of any more care being wasted on him.

* * *

__Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap._ _

When Thorin obtained his mastery, there was more pain than this. The relentless stab of bone needles in his chest, marking out the two crossed axes, it took three days and it hurt. The worst pain came after, when the dull throbbing in his chest spiked to burning agony when Frerin, in the telling of some truly wretched joke, smacked him hard in the sternum.

 _ _“I forgot!”_ _ he protested, trying so hard not to laugh that Thorin would have found the effort commendable if his eyes weren’t stinging with tears of pain. __“Sorry! But you’ve got to grow a thicker skin, nadad.”__

Pain came then, sharp and terrible, but it had nothing to do with the tap-tap of the needles in his arm.

“Do you want to stop?” the ink-artist, a Stiffbeard named Vari asked, wiping away the excess ink from Thorin’s bicep. “I’ve done two already, most want a rest after that.”

“Keep going,” Thorin said, nodding at his untouched left arm. “For my father.”

Vari hesitated a second longer before nodded. “As you wish, sir,” he said, and if Thorin winced, the other dwarf probably thought it was the sting of his new wounds and not the shock of having a dwarf twice his age call him __sir.__

Thorin recovered himself when Vari went to take up his red ink. “Just black,” Thorin specified, closing his eyes, adding, “It wasn’t the battle that got him.”

A grunt of pain to his left made him look up. Balin’s face was contorted, but he smoothed his features and held his head still as the dwarrowdam who was working on him took her needles away with a frown.

“I can fetch a brace, if you’d rather,” she said. “It’s no easy task you’ve set yourself.”

Despite the fact that there had been no proper funeral Balin, like Thorin’s mother, decided to cut his hair in mourning. It was a defiance of tradition, not the correct order of things, but nothing about their lives was traditional, nothing correct. Why stand upon ceremonies they could not afford to perform?

Fundin had done the same thing after the Mountain fell. Not mere cut his hair, he’d shaved the lot of it, a symbol of their exile as well as mourning. Balin followed in his father’s footsteps and as the symbols that told the story of their great loss were etched into pale skin, Thorin wondered if he would ever let his hair grow back, cover them, or if, like his father, he would leave the story of their tragedy visible for all the world to know.

“I can bear it,” Balin told her, gritting his teeth and clenching his fists. “Go on.”

The rhythm was taken up again on Thorin’s left arm once the design had been set first. The marks would look largely the same to the eyes of Men, but others of their race would read the history set down. A Dwarf had died, the story said, winding its way around Thorin’s flesh. His father, a great warrior in his one-hundred and ninetieth year. A king. The king of an hour, a day. Not dead in battle, the black-on-black announced immediately. No, not fallen in battle, but a great warrior nevertheless. Who had a wife and three children, two living, one dead.

A calloused hand squeezed Thorin’s shoulder. The gesture was oddly tender, coming from a stranger. He looked up and the Siffbeard patted his arm, a bare patch. His newest tattoos were freshly bandaged. “That’s you done,” he said kindly. “Go home, get some sleep, lad. You look done in.”

Thorin grimaced as he rose. “I can’t,” he replied shortly, using the last of his money to pay for the work. Sleep or go home, it made no difference, he would do neither that night. “But thank you.”

Sleep had become impossible of late. His body craved it, after long days spent at work to earn enough coin to pay for the necessary and only tributes he and his kin could make to their dead, but his mind rebelled. Moria was miles behind them, the battle was almost a year over, but the distance brought no greater solace. Instead, it brought nightmares.

It was impossible that his mother and sister did not know how often he woke himself up with bad dreams. Though they slept apart from him, they could not have ignored the screaming. They never said a word about it and he silently blessed them both. Thorin cared little for his own suffering, save for that trouble it caused others. If he woke them in the night, he was glad they did not apprise them of it. Let them cover their ears to his shouts and go back to sleep. They deserved that much. He did not.

As they made their way to their meagre lodgings on the outskirts of this latest place they’d tried their luck laboring in - Thorin had quite forgotten the name of the town, not that it mattered, one was like any other after thirty years of wandering - Balin sighed and squinted up at the gathering clouds.

“That looks like a bad storm on the horizon,” he remarked.

Thorin followed his gaze upward and his heart sank. Summer was waning and in this part of the world, too close to the sea for his liking, that meant winds and rain enough to fell trees and wash out roads.

“There are caves nearby, not enough for everyone,” he said. Even after all they’d left behind and lost, there were still so many of his people homeless that Thorin could hardly believe it some days. So many mouths to feed, so many bodies to shelter. “I think - ” he faltered, but Balin waited patiently for him to continue. “I think there are funds enough to rent rooms in town for those who don’t mind the danger.”

Few dwarves, Thorin knew, would prefer the odds of waiting out a gale in Mannish lodgings of wood and plaster to the protection afforded by a shelter of rock and stone. You’d have to be stark-raving mad, the old ones said.

They also said madness ran rampant in the line of Durin.

“I’m up for it,” Dwalin said with a shrug. The bandages on his arms stood out white against his sun-browned skin. “What’s a bit of wet and wind, eh? ‘Least at an inn they’ll feed us.”

“There’s funds enough for lodgings,” Thorin reminded him. “I’m not so sure about the rest of it.”

Men might have questioned the wisdom of spending gold to adorn their bodies with ink, leaving not enough left over for a hot meal. Yet Men were not Dwarves and they had let their dead lie without honor for far too long already. What was a missed meal to that shame? They’d let themselves go hungry for no cause more noble than poverty and bad hunting. At least this was a sacrifice they could take pride in.

Dwalin nodded in understanding. “Ah well, small price for fine work,” he remarked idly.

Beside him, his elder brother snorted, “There’s a lesson well-learned.”

Dwalin took a swipe at him, which Balin dodged easily. When he was younger - not much younger, all things considered - he’d let an apprentice artist have a go at his hands for a pittance. The work was as crude as might be expected and Thorin was sure the both of them would be properly reamed out by their fathers when they returned to camp - Dwalin for getting the tattoos, Thorin for accompanying him, neither of them were exactly of age at the time - but their fathers just shook their heads, more amused than disappointed.

 _ _“Awful,”_ _ Fundin rumbled, patting Dwalin’s hair. __“Just awful. I hope you’ll cough up a better sum for a Journeyman at least, when I’m dead and buried.”__

 _ _“I wouldn’t worry about that,”_ _ Thráin interrupted teasingly. By the Maker, what happy day had that been, what golden hour had they been basking in that Thráin was in a joking mood? __“I’m confident you’ll outlive us all. Or haven’t you heard the rumors? It’s said Fundin, son of Farin cannot die.”__

 _ _“Ach, it's a grander tale than that, by far,”_ _ Óin informed him. Of all their elders, he was the only one who chastised Dwalin outright, saying it would serve him right if all his fingers turned gangrenous and fell off for his foolishness. __“I’ve heard it said he made a deal with the Maker - he being so skilled at warfare - for every orc he kills, he's given another fifty years of life.”__

Fundin rolled his eyes and turned his attention to his nephews, saying, __"Now, lads, I'm not so old as all that,"_ _ giving Dwalin and Thorin the opportunity to scarper off without answering further questions. At the time it seemed a blessing to sneak away unnoticed, but in wretched hindsight Thorin wished he’d remained behind, savored the rare moment of laughter from Fundin and a smile from his father.

Neither of his cousin spoke after that. Maybe they were remembering too.

* * *

That night, as the wind howled outside the little garret room in the inn that Thorin shared with his mother and sister, the only memories of Thráin he could conjure were those of his scorn or his wrath or, worst of all, the hollow, unseeing expression that had been upon his face the very last time Thorin set eyes on him.

There was an orc bearing down on him, its crooked teeth bared in a snarl. Thorin drew forth his sword and went to drive it through the heart of the beast.

 _ _”No!”_ _ he heard his father roar. __“You’ve killed him! Idiot boy, you’ve killed him!”__

As Thorin felt the give of flesh and the splintering of bone beneath his blade, he wondered why his father should be so enraged by the death of one of their enemies. But as he twisted the blade, those pitiless black holes in the creatures head faded to a familiar blue. The gaping maw of the creature became a mouth, whispering his name in terror, __“Thorin…”__

Thorin lashed out, shoving the spectre of his brother away from him. Frerin fell back, his brother’s sword protruding from his chest and over all the Pale Orc raised his grandfather’s bloodied head, deafening him with its cry of triumph -

_“Nadad! Please…”_

With a start, Thorin sat bolt upright, blindly reaching for the dagger under his pillow when something moved, startled, at his right. He froze when he saw his sister standing by his bedside. The wind whistled through the cracks in the window frame of their rented room and lightning flashed outside the glass.

Thorin’s hands stopped itching to grasp the blade, Dís was world-wise enough to stay just out of arm’s reach, but the idea that he might have harmed her horrified him. The dream, his brother’s death by his own hand, came back to him in a rush and Thorin threw himself away from her with a low groan.

Frerin’s death was worse than those shade conjured by his sleeping mind. It had to be. For Thorin had not seen him fall. They’d been separated and he’d broken all his promises.

 _ _Go away,_ _ he pleaded with her silently. __I couldn’t protect him, how can I protect you?__

Dís did not go away. On the contrary, she climbed into bed next to him and her thin fingers carded through his sweat-drenched hair, smoothed his unbound beard. Thorin caught her hand, but did not push her away. Selfish, of course, it was selfish, but he took her comfort, all the comfort she offered.  
  
“Sing something,” he begged and she complied. The Maker only knew why, but she did. And she stayed, her hand in his until dawn and their mother was shaking them awake, bidding them rise lest they overstay their welcome and be forced to pay more for it.

Thorin caught a glimpse of himself in the washbowl before he plunged his hands into the water and distorted the image. It didn’t look like him. Not his face, not that dwarf who, aside from his shadowed eyes, seemed a hale specimen in the bloom of youth. Thorin felt as though he’d lived a thousand years and suffered a thousand sorrows. And he didn’t have a single scar to show for it.

The room was empty. And he’d replaced his dagger at his belt.

Thorin stared at his face when the water stopped rippling in the bowl. Then he seized the end of his beard in one fist and, in one swift motion, cut it short, close. Any closer and he’d have slit his own throat.

When he looked again at his handiwork he felt he breathed for the first time in almost a year.

Better. That was better. If pressed, he could not say why. Full mourning without a funeral when had lost neither spouse nor child to the war was not the done thing, but somehow it felt right. Fitting. What else could he do to show the world his sorrow?

A shorn beard among dwarves meant many things, it spoke melancholy, punishment and loneliness. It spoke of hurts too deep and fatal to close, of things lost that they would never get back.

Even as he closed himself off - one look at his face would tell others, __This is a dwarf who has known heartache, leave him be, leave him be_ _ \- he approached his family with less reluctance than he had in almost as long as he could remember. Their eyes rose as he descended the staircase and they stared in surprise.

All but his mother who nodded to herself, a small movement, easily overlooked. Not satisfaction, but confirmation. A long-held fear filled at last, bringing the smallest measure of relief. She crossed the room to meet him at the foot of the stairs. Their people were the only ones up and about, the dawn was only just rising over the hills, glinting on the windows. The storm had blown itself out.

Freya took Thorin’s face in her hands and tilted his head down that she might kiss his brow.

“And when will you grow it back?” she asked, smoothing down the ends of his beard with only a touch of regret.

Never, Thorin thought. Because growing his beard out would imply healing. Would mean that he wasn’t troubled by a wound that would never close. But his mother’s hard, miserable eyes demanded an answer, one that didn’t have a ring of childishness to it.

“When the Mountain is reclaimed,” he said, meeting her eyes and taking her arms by the wrists, gently lowering her hands.

Freya read the intent behind the words and closed her eyes briefly, nodding. “Shall we call forth the wagons?” she queried and this time, Thorin responded immediately, without the usual pause before she realized his mother was asking him what their next course of action would be.

“Aye,” he replied. “I thought we should go north. To the Ered Luin.”

“For the winter?” Balin asked.

There was only the smallest hesitation in Thorin’s nod. “The winter,” he confirmed. “Maybe longer.”

“That’ll be nice,” Dwalin mused. “To be amongst our kind again. No more sleeping in wooden shacks.”

Dís giggled and Thorin laughed too, a sound that was just slightly rusty around the edges. “Hush,” he advised his best and dearest friend. “That flint-eyed landlord’ll hear you and charge us for insults.”

“Eh, we’ll show him the sharp side of our knives and refuse to pay,” Dwalin said, nodding toward the door. “Anyway, if the walls are so thin he can hear a whispered complaint, then I think I can call this place a shack - it’s not an insult if it’s honest.”

“Whisper?” Balin asked, amused, as he headed for the door. “You’ve never whispered anything a day in your life.”

“Do you think we’ll be in the Blue Mountains by Durin’s Day?” Dís asked, taking Thorin’s arm as he passed by her.

It was impossible to deny those earnest blue eyes and Thorin bent, kissing her on the top of the head. “Could be, though I’d not lay down hard coin on our odds. Would you like that?”

“Oh, aye,” she nodded eagerly. “That’d be a treat, we’ve not been anywhere decent for new years in an age.”

“Not quite that long,” her mother reminded her. “We were in the Iron Hills ten years ago, do you remember?” With a look on her face that might have been called sly in another life she cocked her head up at Thorin and asked, “Do __you_ _ remember?”

Thorin ducked his head and smiled. It was a queer, sad little thing, but it was a smile all the same. “I think you’ve confused me with your other son,” he said softly.

“Well, he definitely wouldn’t remember,” Freya lamented, rolling her eyes. “How humiliating.”

“He said he was sure you’d find it funny, if you waited a few years,” Dís reminded her. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder, the dwarfling was just as tall as her mother.

“Still waiting,” Freya informed her daughter, trudging on a few feet ahead of the rest of them to greet the rest of their people, coming down over the crest of the hill. So many. So many lives to fret over, mouths to feed, bodies to shelter.

Thorin looked at them all, young, old, scarred, whole, and for the first time felt something less than dread.

It was time to move on, he thought as he gave the order to ready the wagons. They’d wandered long enough.


End file.
